Share via

This is war, same as usual,” wrote Matthew Engel, The Guardian’s
cricket correspondent, before an Ashes series sometime in the 1980s. Would
he say the same now?

Possibly, but with a codicil. The nature of the Ashes has not changed — it
remains as important to players and spectators as it always was — but the
nature of the battle has changed. Less hand-to-hand, raw combat, now, it is
a more gentrified battlefield.

The cover photograph for Australia, The Story of a Cricket Country, a
recent compilation of cricket writing, was well chosen. It consisted of an
iconic group of cricketers, in